


Behaving Irregularly

by historyism



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Desperation, Discrimination, Dubious Consent, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Poor Will, Takes place during S1, against omegas?, maybe? - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-02
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:40:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8725924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/historyism/pseuds/historyism
Summary: Will's mind catches on fire, his heat suppressants stop working, and his psychiatrist  is an alpha named Hannibal Lecter. (Season 1 AU.)





	

 In the night, Will dreams about being held down and fucked (some black shape with no face pressing his hands above his head, biting savagely at his throat like an animal, saying, "Take it, take it, take it—"). When he wakes up, he's sweating and ashamed and helplessly hard. He takes a biting cold shower, and swallows a small blue pill with water from the sink.

 

The central heating turns on with  a dull roar that pulses in Will's ears, that makes his headache worse. He fights the urge to put his hands over his ears like a child.

"You are agitated," Hannibal says.

Will grits his teeth. "Yes, Dr. Lecter. Very observant." Lack of sleep makes him rude.

Something flickers behind Lecter's eyes and flattens just as quickly, and he says nothing more. He watches Will pace up and down the length of his office. Then, after a long while has passed, he stands in one slick, graceful motion. He has the facility of a predator, Will thinks, blearily, but then, all alphas do.

Lecter approaches him with silent footsteps. Will refuses to tense. He's not prey, after all, not something to be hunted. When Lecter's gotten close, he leans a bit closer and takes a delicate sniff of his shoulder.

"Hey—what—"

"Suppressants are not good for health, Will," Lecter says, like he's chastising him. "Not when taken for a long time."

It's not at all polite to talk about this kind of stuff, about alphas and omegas and heats—not in their civilized society. It alarms Will. He hesitates for a moment. "I think, Dr. Lecter," he says finally, "that that's none of your concern."

"I am your doctor—and your friend. It is my concern."

Lecter smiles. His face is odd when it smiles, like it's something that he has to assemble.

Will hates that he's shorter than Lecter, hates being caged in, hates that alphas think they can put their face close and show the sharp white of their teeth and he'll blush. "Back up," he says, disguising his uneasiness with frustration. "I—I can't breathe."

Lecter's good at being civilized, at least. He moves himself back immediately. "Ah, I'm sorry. I did not mean to intrude upon your space."

Will tries to act nonchalant too, but there's a hot pit of anger burning somewhere in his stomach. "Listen, doctor. You don't come that close to me unless I tell you."

There are gears clicking in Lecter's head, analyzing him, recalibrating maybe. Will can sense them without seeing them. "It is your right," Lecter acknowledges eventually, and he's smiling all disarming and curious, and his hands are held loose in front of him, palms up, like a submission. It's more than a lot of alphas would do.

It doesn't stop Will from being angry.

 

 

By the time they come onto the crime scene, it's already swarming with police officers and investigators.

"We found her yesterday evening," Jack says briskly, putting a hand on his shoulder and steering him towards the door. Will doesn't like the feeling of being touched. "But she's been here for a while. The neighbors noticed a certain _odor._ "

The smell of it hits him as soon as they go through the door, so strong that Will hardly even notices the open stares of the beta and alpha policemen inside. Hardly. Before they've made it to the top of the stairs, though, he hears some police officer murmur behind him, "Hell, they're letting an _omega—"_ , with that particular tone of voice that he hates, and so when he does his job, twists his mind into becoming someone else, he's almost relieved.

He drives home with his hands tight around the steering wheel.  When he stops at a light, he thinks about heading to a shop for some dinner, but can't even countenance the idea of dealing with more people.

He ends up sitting on the floor in his kitchen surrounded by his dogs, eating cold, plasticky ravioli from a can. 

 

In the night, he finds himself standing in some cold forest outside his house, burning his eyes—alone, drained out.

And the feeling persists as he makes it home through the frost in his bare feet, persists when he sits at the scrubbed kitchen table and clasps his hands to warm them and shakes. He thinks about someone he could call for help—Alana maybe, but she'll fuss and pity him, look at him with too-warm eyes that'll make him want to itch out of his skin.

He picks up his phone and calls Lecter.

Lecter takes about an hour to get there. When he arrives, he brings thermoses full of warm hot chocolate.

"Are you all right?" he asks, looking at him with delicate concern.

"I'm fine."

Will swallows large gulps of hot chocolate, burning his throat until he feels alive again. He huddles on the couch and watches Lecter move around his home, looking at things painfully politely, never touching.

"Some people find sleepwalking to be a disturbing experience—losing control of one's body," Lecter says evenly. He leans down to examine a fish hook. "Are you afraid of losing control of your body?"

Will puts down his thermos and starts laughing. He laughs for a long time, he thinks, with his hands folded in his lap, warm from the hot chocolate. He can feel Lecter's uncanny, speculative eyes on him. His throat hurts and tugs. When he stops, he says flatly, "Cheap psychiatry, doctor."

Lecter is undisturbed. "Simple questions are often the most effective."

Will leans back and looks at him, him in his crisp suit and perfectly slicked hair at 2 AM. The composed, powerfully smooth motion of his body. "How about you, then? Are you afraid of losing your control?"

In a moment, Lecter's face dissembles and reassembles—the mask changing to a smile. Will blinks hard.

"No," Lecter says. "I have learned to keep a very tight hold of myself—my actions, my—desires—at all times." Yes, Will thinks, an alpha as powerful as Dr. Lecter must surely have _desires_. His stomach churns. "It is almost second nature by now to do so. The mind, as they say, is stronger than the body. Always." Lecter seems to lean forward towards Will without actually leaning forward, says with infinite compassion, "I do not like falling victim to base instincts," and the compassion is the worst part, the sympathy, because it means he's seen the weakness in Will, seen Will's slow loss of control, and Will hates weakness in himself most of all—

Will understands, however, that Lecter is being more forthright about his feelings than he usually is to others. He's not sure what to think about that. "Then we understand each other," he says quietly.

Lecter smiles. "Yes, perhaps we do."

 

Will's spent his whole life studying the way people work; how predictable they are, how governed by natural instincts. Hannibal's different, unlike any other alpha Will's ever met.

Undeniably dominant, but cold and contained and precise. He doesn't move the way Will's come to expect alphas to move—doesn't ever touch him, now, stays a good foot away from him always. Every action is carefully calculated. Whatever desires he has, he keeps capped up in some place inside of him. Will admires that.

He's driving through Quantico, getting home, when the black swirls in his head build up too much and he stops in a bar to get a drink. It's hot and muzzy in the place, filled with smells and pheromones and sweat, the scent of people trying to find someone to fuck.

Will hasn't slept in two days, buzzed on tiredness and death. He's on his third drink when some alpha with blond hair and a square chin leans next to him at the bar, sneering in a way that makes Will want to snarl and bite him, reaching out to brush back his matted hair, touch his arm like he _owns_ him—

Will doesn't like being touched. The smell of the man, the sound of his voice, twists his guts. He jerks away in a kind of blind, terrified panic while people laugh and jeer behind him, stumbles out into the cold night and takes heaving breaths that he can't control. He drives home tight-fisted. As soon as his car stops outside his house, he has his zipper ripped open and his cock in his hand.

"Oh God," he pants. It's getting worse—the sweating, the _wanting._ The blue pills are supposed to stop heats and pregnancy, but they don't fucking stop it anymore _._ It's getting worse. "God, fuck, it's all in my mind—my _mind—"_

But he can't stop the way he craves. He turns his head and scents the alpha's scent still lingering on his shoulder, dominant and hot and revolting. He seizes, hisses, comes for a long time into his head until he's limp.

He looks down at himself for a long time afterwards, shuddering, because it's not _fair,_ not fair that he's been reduced to this, jerking off to the faint smell of some swaggering alpha in a cheap bar. As soon as he steps into his house, he tosses his jacket into the washing machine. Then he feeds his dogs kibble and pale meat, and runs laps around his house until he's absolutely breathless.

 

One day, Will falls asleep on the couch in Lecter's waiting room. In his dream, Lecter says sadly, "You're falling apart, Will", and then it's the mouths on his neck, fingers on his cock, pressed to the bed—the same stuff that's been in his dreams every night for weeks, the stuff he can't stop dreaming about. He wakes up to Hannibal leaning over him with a strange expression on his face, shaking his shoulder.

"Will," he's saying, "Will."

Will's crying, he realizes with mortification when he reaches up to tear off his glasses—but even worse than that, he's _hard,_ achingly hard _._ He sits up and jerks away from Lecter's steadying hand, mumbling, "Sorry, sorry, fell asleep, sorry—"

"It's perfectly all right," Lecter says, but he's looking at him with eyes that are glittering more than usual. Will's jacket is long enough that it hides his arousal, but Lecter's nostrils flair—he's smelling him, no doubt can smell his hormones, his arousal. Will grimaces, and leans up to wipe his glasses, but his fingers are trembling too badly.

"I'm sorry," he says again, can't bear to look up.

Even though it's late, and the office is closed, Lecter ends up leading him inside his office, where Will collapses in a chair and rubs his hands over his face. "God," he stammers, "I just, I have these dreams—"

Lecter sits across from him. When Will peeks between his fingers, he sees that despite Lecter's studied posture, he's more tense than usual, watching him more intently. He's letting off hormones now too, triggered by Will's, and the smell of them—alpha, alpha, alpha—makes Will dizzy.

"They're not—not the usual dreams that I tell you about. Not just of people dying and, and—bodies. It's—" He cuts himself off, feels he would die if Lecter knew the things he dreamed.

"Will," Lecter says, and he's leaning forward now. "Please. I can try to help you. But you have to tell me—"

" _Sex,"_ Will snaps. "I dream about, about being—"

He's out of the chair before he realizes, pacing. There's cotton in his throat or something—he feels unbearably dizzy and overcome, feels like he can taste the smell of Lecter, feels like he could collapse on him and rut into him helplessly until he's spent. There's a dark blush spreading down his neck.

"Will," Lecter says gently. "How long have you been having these dreams?"

"I don't know. Weeks. I can't sleep. They—they make me—"

And he doesn't know how to say it, how to make Lecter and his goddamn control and his bright eyes understand that he's losing his mind, he's losing his mind.

"I told you before," Lecter says after a long, bloodless hesitation, "that suppressants are not good for the physiological health of the body, nor for the psychological health of the mind — not when taken for a long time. And you have taken—"

"I don't want to talk about that. I'm not going to stop taking suppressants."

"Will—"

"Do you know what it's fucking like?" Will snarls. "Being—"

"An omega?"

He gets up close to Lecter, furious. " _I_ know what's it's like, getting bonded, fucking losing your control, your power, your dignity—being tied to some alpha, losing everything that I've worked for all these years. Getting—getting _rutted_ like an animal. I'm _not_ an animal. I'm not going to lose myself to that—lose myself to—"

Lecter watches him. Will hates that Lecter can sit, that his hands aren't even shaking, even though the smell of his own pheromones must be in him, because Will can smell Hannibal in return—

He crushes their mouths together hard enough that it hurts, hard enough that he can feel the sharp press of Hannibal's teeth beneath his skin. Hannibal is very, very still beneath him for a long moment, his hands reaching up to his waist. "Will," he says, pulling away. His breath is hot in Will's face. "You are behaving irregularly. You must—"

Will kisses him again, biting hard at Lecter's lip and fucking his tongue in hot and slick when Lecter's mouth opens. Oh god, he _needed_ this, can't remember the last time he let himself go down in a rush like this. Hormones twist and roil in his stomach, sweeping up his spine and buzzing at the base of his skull. Lecter skims his hands up and down Will's back, gentling him like he would a child or a skittish animal. Will rips himself away.

"God," he says, leaning his head down on Hannibal's neck. Underneath his ear, he hears that the speed of Lecter's heart rate has increased.

"Will," Lecter says after a moment. "Will. Please. You must step back."

Will doesn't think he can.

**Author's Note:**

> So I was really into this show when Season 1 came out, and then I forgot about it for three years and deleted all of my fics from ao3, and then last week I finally watched Seasons 2 and 3 and got really into this show again. Then I wrote porn about it.
> 
> /unnecessary backstory that no one cares about


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